Right in front of the YWAM base is a bus station.
We generally catch that bus down to the metro station (14-20 minute ride).
Then you head downstairs…if you see people coming up the stairs you know the metro just arrived and you rush hoping to get on that one before it leaves. They generally come about every 5 minutes during the week, and about every 10 minutes on the weekend.
People haul all kinds of things on the metro…lots of strollers, bikes, scooters, dogs, skis, sleds and we even saw someone moving some furniture they had purchased.
You can check out the reader board to find when the next metro will be arriving and where it is headed to. The stops are all listed on the map. Everyone of them has a distinct tone they play when they arrive. Instead of school buses, students ride public transportation to and from school (and they come home for lunch every day).
Then it is about another 15 minutes on the metro down to the center of Lausanne (where we would go to church) or to the train station and another 10 minutes to the lake front. The metro travels under the old city (including under the cathedral).
The train stations can be quite the elaborate buildings. The large train stations have quite a bit of shopping, flower shops, tea and coffee shops, grab and go restaurants and convenience stores inside.
In Lausanne there are 5 platforms and 10 tracks that trains come in and out on.
When the train comes in you need to make sure you get in the right area. We area always looking for the 2 by the door which indicates a regular ticket (the 1 indicates first class)
We have a SBB train app that we have installed on our phones so we can easily buy tickets for the bus/train/metro/boats. We also purchased a half-fare card which makes it cheaper to buy tickets. With the half-fare card it costs about $3 for a 2 hour ticket to go 3 zones (down the to city of Lausanne) or $7.50 for an all day pass to the city.
Generally, those forms of transportation are quite timely. The day of the first big snowfall, the buses were a bit delayed and last Saturday the trains had a bit of delay in the areas that had quite a bit of snow. I laugh now at the Thomas the Tank Engine stories I read to my children when they were little about the delays because of snow…now that we have ridden a few trains, those stories make more sense.
One of the fun things we have done on occasion is buy a super saver day pass for the train. It allows you to travel anywhere in the country on any kind of transportation for one flat rate. You have to buy them ahead of time but depending on the day you can travel anywhere in the country from 29-75 CHF ($32-$82 USD) with a half-price card. The good thing is that the train stations take you to the center of the city which is generally where the things you would like to see are located…the old buildings, Christmas markets and the museums. People do walk a lot around here.
If the weather is not that pleasant, people just take their umbrellas and go anyway.
You do have to be patient when you ride public transportation as you wait for trains and buses. You see a lot of people entertaining themselves on their phones and wearing earbuds or noise cancelling headphones. It is very relaxing though…a couple of weeks ago the weather was very snowy, but you get on a train and can just sit back and enjoy the ride with no thought of slick roads or having to find (and pay for) parking when you arrive.
On New Years Eve we took a boat across Lake Geneva to the French town of Thonon-les-Baines. The boat ride was about 45 minutes. They had very comfortable seats (like they have in the trains) inside and you could stand out in the open air in the back. We caught a boat over at 8 in the morning. We had options to come back at 1:30, 4:30 or 7 or 8 in the evening. We chose the 4:30 return and got to watch the sun set as we crossed the lake!
The YWAM base here has a fleet of 9 passenger vans that they use to transport people. They also have some cars that seat 5 that the staff at the base can sign out and pay by the kilometer to use on the evenings or weekends. They also rent buses to transport larger numbers 50 or 80 (double decker bus) at a time when there are outings (like the one we joined that went to Zurich).
There you have it…our adventures in different modes of transportation than we were used to!
